She ran outside and found Hart-Browne leaning over her boyfriend laying in a pool of blood.

After an ambulance arrived, Hart-Browne was found in a distressed state, barefoot and wearing only one earring.

Asked what happened, she allegedly told a police officer she stabbed him, saying: "I didn't mean to do it, I'm so sorry."

After she was arrested and taken to Acton police station, the defendant was examined and found to have some minor scratches and red skin.

The court heard she was distressed on being told Mr Rayner was dead and told police: "I have just killed the man I love."

In interview, she told how she had drunk champagne and wine that night but denied being drunk.

On arriving home, she said she got into bed fully clothed but became upset at Mr Rayner again.

She got up to have a cigarette and Mr Rayner began hitting her and holding her by the throat, she said.

Hart-Browne said she waved a knife at him and pushed her partner as he held on to her neck and hair.

According to her account, she hit him with the knife unintentionally.

As neighbours ran to his aid outside, Hart-Browne said she panicked and went back to clean the knife and clear up blood around the television.

Hart-Browne, who sat in the dock wearing blue jeans and a pale blue sweater with her long blonde hair in a ponytail, denies murder.

Ms Cottage said: "The defendant says that she picked up a knife from the living room table to defend herself while she was being violently attacked and that during the struggle they stumbled and Stephen Rayner was accidentally injured.

"The prosecution say that she is lying and that she deliberately armed herself with a knife from the kitchen and just as deliberately stabbed Stephen Rayner with it intending at least to cause him serious harm, if not to kill him."

Defending, James Scobie QC said the couple's relationship was both "golden" and "grim".

He read out a WhatsApp message she had sent him which he said summed up their relationship.

She wrote that "all I want from you is for you to love me" and not think that "hitting, abusing me is okay, like telling people I beg for you to sleep with me, calling me fat and ugly".

Mr Scobie told jurors: ""You are going to be hearing about the golden parts of their relationship...and you are going to be hearing the grim parts."

But he told jurors it would be made abundantly "loud and clear" in the trial why she stayed with him.

Ipsoregulated

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